Professor Marek Kwiek
Center for Public Policy Studies
UNESCO Chair in Institutional Research and Higher Education Policy
University of Poznan, Poland
[e-mail]

From Growth to Decline?
Demand-Absorbing Private Higher Education when
Demand is Over

(forthcoming in: A Global Perspective of Private Higher Education edited by
Mahsood Shah and Chenicheri Sid Nair, New York: Elsevier, 2016).

Introduction: European and global growth patterns in private
higher education

The growth of the private sector in higher education in Europe – in terms of the
number of institutions and the share of enrolments in national systems – has been an
educational phenomenon of post-communist transition countries.

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As Daniel C. Levy

(2010: 10) points out, though: “one of the key trends in international higher education,
the rapid expansion of the private sector now holds one-third of all global enrolments.
However, the growth is not unbroken or inexorable and sometimes stalls and even
reverses”. Poland is an example of the reversal in question. While the expansion era
(1990-2005) was characterized by external privatization (that is, private sector
growth), combined with internal privatization (or the increasing role of fees in the
operating budgets of public universities), the current contraction era (2005-2025, and
possibly beyond) is characterized by what we term “de-privatization”. De-
privatization also has external and internal dimensions: the gradual decline in private
sector enrolments is combined with a decreasing role of fees in funding for public
universities (see Kwiek 2015).

Private higher education in post-war Europe, before its phenomenal growth in post-
communist countries after 1989, emerged first in Spain (1973), Portugal (1979) and
Turkey (1981). Following Levy (2002a), the distinction between “elite provision” and
“access provision” can be used in exploring this sector: in Western Europe (Austria,
Germany, Italy, Portugal, France, Spain, and Russia), private higher education sectors
correlate with elite-providing roles; in contrast, in most post-communist transition
countries, these sectors correlate with access-providing roles (Albania, Bulgaria,
Estonia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, and Portugal; with Russia and Portugal

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Exceptions include especially Portugal, as well as, to a smaller extent, France, Italy, and

Spain; see in particular Portugal as discussed in the last decade in Neave and Amaral 2012,
Teixeira 2012, Teixeira and Amaral 2007, and Teixeira and Amaral 2001.

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being included in both categories, Fried et al. 2007: 645-646). In Poland, the number
of semi-elite private providers is marginal: in all probability, in the range of 10-20 out
of more than 300 in 2015. In some countries (such as, for example, Sweden, Belgium
or the Netherlands), nominally private institutions are funded in practice from the
public purse, in various forms and under different umbrellas. In this paper, we
consider “private” only those institutions which meet the definition of “independent
private institutions” formulated by the OECD in its Handbook for Internationally
Comparative Education Statistics: Concepts, Standards, Definitions and
Classifications; these are the institutions that receive less than 50 percent of their core
funding from government agencies and whose staff is not paid by such agencies
(OECD 2004).

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The global demographics of private higher education is such that the major centre of
the sector is East Asia, with about 80 percent of all students enrolled in private
universities in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines; in the USA (somehow
surprisingly) – only 20 percent; in Western Europe – on average 10 percent or less; in
Latin America – over 50 percent in Brazil, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela; and
finally, in European post-communist transition countries, and in some post-Soviet
republics, where the most rapid growth took place after 1989 – up to 30 percent (see
the most recent data on the PROPHE: Program for Research on Higher Education
website). As Levy, PROPHE’s director, puts it, “where public budgets do not meet the
still rapidly growing demand for higher education, students pay for alternatives”
(Levy, 2002: 4) – and this is what happened in Poland following 1989. While Western
Europe has not in general witnessed the emergence (or substantial strengthening,
depending on the country) of the private sector in higher education, in several post-
communist transition countries in Europe, for a variety of reasons, the private sector
emerged as a demand-absorbing competitor to the traditional, elitist, faculty-centred and
often inaccessible public sector. The differences among the transition countries are
significant, though, and in this chapter our focus is Poland.

The changing public–private dynamics

The private sector in Poland cannot be explored outside of the context of the public
sector: its future is closely linked to the changing public–private dynamics in the
whole system. It is useful to explore its future in the context of two major ongoing
processes:

● large-scale reforms of public higher education (see Kwiek 2014), and
● broad, long-term demographic changes.

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Thus we do not analyze here those private higher education institutions which the OECD

terms “government-dependent private institutions”: that is, by definition, those which receive
from government agencies more than 50 percent of their core funding, or those whose staff
are employed and paid by these agencies.

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The question of its future is much larger, though: as Peter Scott asks in his study on
Central Europe – are higher education systems in the region “trendsetters” for Europe
(providing models for other European systems), or is the significance of private
institutions in this part of Europe “a passing phase attributable to the special
circumstances surrounding the transition from communist to post-communist
regimes”, a response to particular political circumstances i.e. an “internal
phenomenon” (Scott 2007: 309)? There is no final answer today; both demographics
and politics will play their substantial roles in the next decade. The role of
demographics is predictable – but the role of politics is not (Kwiek 2013b). Poland,
already experiencing severe demographic shifts in higher education, and the fastest-
aging society in the OECD area by 2025, needs thoughtful policy responses under
changing public–private dynamics. Demographic shifts are painful to both sectors –
enrolments dwindled from about 2 million in 2005 to about 1.5 million in 2014.
Emergent policies might use more market mechanisms in the public sector, more
cross-sectoral competition, and more private funding in both public and private
sectors. However, they might also merely follow declining demographics and current
funding arrangements in the public sector (no fees for full-time students, despite recent
failed attempts to introduce fees for full-time students studying a second field of study
or longer than 5.5. years), and let the system be gradually re-monopolized by the
public sector. Depending on policy choices, both scenarios are possible. But the policy
of no interference, known from the 1990s, seems more plausible today. A continuous
increase of tax-based places in the public sector may lead to the ultimate demise (or
semi-demise) of the private sector, after a quarter of a century of its existence in
Poland. Individual, institutional “strategies for survival” (which Teixeira and Amaral
(2007) sought for Portuguese private higher education decline in the 2000s) do not
suffice in the Polish context; large-scale changes in national funding architectures
might slow down the process but would not change its direction.

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If the status quo is

maintained, the contraction period (2005-2025) will bring about the decline of the

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Major conclusions from research on Portuguese private higher education fit the Polish case

perfectly. Major mechanisms in the emergence, growth, and public/private dynamics seem
similar. One argument is that the private sector was a cheap solution to the expansion issue:
“expansion based on private sources has made possible an increase in enrolment rates at
minor cost to public finances” (Teixeira and Amaral 2001: 363). Another argument is about
the limited inter-sectoral public–private competition: “the main public institutions … compete
among themselves for the best students, for research funds, and even for academic staff. … In
general, these [private sector] initiatives have been designed for short-term profit making
rather than as sound academic and financial projects” (Teixeira and Amaral 2001: 370). Still
another argument is about the demand which exceeded supply: “for the new developing
private sector, resources have not been scarce because demand has largely exceeded the
available provision. This has meant that private institutions could do what they liked: and this
they certainly did. … Institutions have preferred to offer [a] low-quality, low-cost product in
order to maximize short-term profits instead of aiming at a better product that in the long run
would offer them better prospects of survival” (Teixeira and Amaral 2001: 390-391). Finally,
as in Poland, “costly or risky activities” were left to public institutions. For parallel
discussions about Polish private higher education, see Kwiek 2012a, Kwiek 2012b, and
Kwiek 2010.

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predominantly demand-absorbing private sector: when demand is over, the sector will
finally shrink: from more than one third of enrolments in 2006-2009, possibly to 10-12
percent of enrolments in 2025, and from the ceiling of 330 private institutions in 2009
to about 60 within a decade, according to recent predictions of the Ministry of Science
and Higher Education (MoSHE 2012: 8).

From the expanding privatized to the contracting publicly-funded
university

Polish higher education has changed fundamentally since 1989, both quantitatively
(participation rates, the number of students, faculty and institutions) and qualitatively
(regained institutional autonomy and academic freedom, shared governance, emergent
public–private duality, new competitive research funding regimes, and new fee
regimes). The scope of changes and their speed are not easy to comprehend outside the
context of the overall post-communist transition to an open, market-driven economy,
fully integrated with European Union (EU) economies. The gradual political,
economic and social integration of Poland with the EU has been accompanied by a
deepening, gradual integration with Western European higher education and research
systems, already involved in the deepened European integration processes (Maassen
and Olsen 2007, Kwiek and Maassen 2012).

Polish higher education by 2005 became a dual (public–private) highly differentiated,
strongly marketized and hugely expanded system, with all the ensuing consequences
of fast changes for both institutions and the academic profession. Since 1989, the
system has witnessed a phenomenal rise in the number of public and private
institutions, a rise and fall in the number of students (from 0.40 million in 1989 up to
1.95 million in 2006 and down to 1.82 million in 2010, and 1.55 million in 2013), as
well as a rise in the number of doctoral students (from about 2,000 in 1990 to about
43,400 in 2013) and in the number of academics (from 40,000 to 99,000 in the same
period).

The emergence of the private higher education sector in the 1990s contributed to
demand-absorbing growth – but the expansion occurred throughout the two sectors,
and throughout the two major modes of studies, full-time and part-time (Poland has the
highest share of part-time students in Europe, 39.37 percent in 2013, GUS 2014: 61).
The period of expansion can be viewed through the double matrix of two major
dimensions: public and private sectors, and full-time and part-time modes of studies,
or through a single matrix in which the major dimension is fees. The most prestigious
first-choice positions have been free or tax-based places in the public sector; the
second-choice positions have been fee-based places in the public sector and in the
private sector.

Consequently, Polish students can be defined by the sectors they come from: public
and private. But even more fundamentally, they can be defined as fee-paying and tax-
based students. Fee-paying students are all students from the private sector (full-time
and part-time) and all part-time students from the public sector. Tax-based students are

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all full-time students from the public sector. While according to the former distinction,
25.72 percent of students are enrolled in private institutions and 74.28 percent in
public institutions (2013); according to the second distinction, less than half of all
students, or 45.50 percent, are fee-paying students. The first impact of the current
powerful reversed demographic trend is seen through the stagnating, and then falling,
share of fee-paying students in both sectors (combined) beginning in 2006. The total
number of tax-based students have been increasing throughout the last decade, but
only in the last five academic years (2009-2013) did the share of tax-based students
increase from 43.58 percent (2009) to 55.50 percent (2013) (GUS 2014: 61). Under
such declining demographics, the speed of the ongoing changes in student composition
by sources of funding (and by sector) has been amazing; it has been a zero-sum game:
in student numbers, public sector gains mean private sector losses.

The share of fee-paying students (that is, all students in the private sector and part-time
students in the public sector) in the student body in the expansion period of 1990-2005
was high from a European comparative perspective (46.6 percent in 1995, 62.8 percent
in 2000 and 58.9 percent in 2005). In the contraction period, in 2006 and beyond, this
share has been steadily declining, down to 44.50 percent in 2013. The Ministry expects
it to be only 20 percent in 2022 (MoSHE 2012: 8). A set of figures below shows the
ongoing changes in the contraction period in both sectors combined (Figs. 1, 2 and 3),
in the public sector (Fig. 4) and in the public sector (Fig. 5).

Figure 1. The number of fee-paying students in public and private sectors combined, 2006-
2013 (in thousands).

Source: own calculations based on GUS 2014 and its previous editions.

Figure 2. The change in the number of fee-paying students in both sectors combined, 2006-
2013 (2006 = 100 percent).

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Source: own calculations based on GUS 2014 and its previous editions.

Figure 3. The share of fee-paying students in both sectors combined, 2006-2013 (in percent).

Source: own calculations based on GUS 2014 and its previous editions.

Figure 4. The number of fee-paying students in the public sector, 2006-2013 (in thousands).

Source: own calculations based on GUS 2014 and its previous editions.

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Against global trends in cost-sharing (increasing percentages of fee-paying students
(see Johnstone and Marcucci 2010, Johnstone 2006, and Callender and Heller 2013),
the number of fee-paying students in Poland has been steadily decreasing: by almost
15 percentage points in 2006-2103 (from 58.58 percent to 44.50 percent). The new
public-private dynamics puts the question of cost-sharing in a different context. The
question of equitable access to higher education looks differently when six in ten
students pay fees and differently when it is only four, and ultimately, two in ten in the
coming decade (MoSHE 2012: 9). The changing public-private dynamics leads either
to the refinement of arguments in favor of universal fess or to their different nature.
The social experiment of high fees in England, unique in Europe, needs to be studied
closely in Poland.

Figure 5. The share of fee-paying students in the public sector, 2006-2013 (2006 = 100
percent).

Source: own calculations based on GUS 2014 and its previous editions.

In the 1990s, when the first private institutions appeared throughout Central and
Eastern Europe, Polish higher education policy was focused mostly on educational
expansion. Private (called “non-public” in legal terms) institutions in Poland and
elsewhere in the region were mushrooming; there were limited quality assurance
mechanisms and accreditation procedures in place at the time. The first strong Polish
Accreditation Commission, technically able to monitor teaching quality in private (as
well as public) higher education was formed in 2002. The expansion of the system in
the 1990s was closely linked to relaxed educational policy that encouraged external
privatization (the emergence of new private providers) and internal privatization (the
emergence of fee-based part-time studies in the nominally free, or tax-based, public
sector; on the distinction, see Kwiek 2010, 2013a).

As has been discussed elsewhere in more detail (Kwiek 2013b), the upward trend was
accompanied by increasing hierarchical differentiation: much of the growth was

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absorbed by public and private second-tier institutions as well as by first-tier public
institutions in their academically less demanding and less selective part-time studies.
Expansion also took place predominantly in specific fields of study, such as, in
particular, social sciences, economics, and law (see Figures 6 and 7 below for the
private sector, and Figures 8 and 9 for both sectors combined). In the private sector,
the share of students in these areas was 74.41 percent in 2000, and then decreased, but
is still about a half of all enrolments (49.04 percent in 2013).

Figure 6. Share of enrollments by field of study in Poland, private sector, 2000-2013 (in %)

Source: GUS 2014: 64-65 (and previous editions).

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Figure 7. Enrollments by field of study in Poland, private sector, 2000-2013

Source: GUS 2014: 64-65 (and previous editions).

Figure 8. Enrollments by field of study in Poland, public and private sectors, 2013

Source: GUS 2014: 64-65.

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Figure 9. Enrolments by field of study in Poland, public and private sectors combined, 2000-
2013

Source: GUS 2014: 64-65 (and previous editions).

The expansion was financially supported by both public and private sources of
funding. The inflow of public funding to the public sector in the expansion period was
significant, but equally significant was the inflow of private funding from fees to both
sectors. While the private sector is overwhelmingly reliant on tuition fees, the public
sector during the peak of expansion (especially in 2000-2005) was also heavily reliant
on tuition fees from part-timers which provided 16-20 percent of its operating budget
in that period. Then the share of funding from fees was decreasing year by year, both
in the public system as a whole and in the budgets of individual institutions, including
the two most prestigious, University of Warsaw and Jagiellonian University in
Cracow.

While Polish higher education in 1970-1990 could be termed unified (Meek et al.
1996, Shavit et al. 2007), in the recent period of expansion (1990-2005) it moved from
a unified to a diversified system. Under communism there was no inclination to
encourage higher education expansion, either of existing elite universities or through
the formation of new, especially non-university institutions. The number of students in
the two decades 1970-1990 was strictly controlled by the state and, in general, did not
increase. While Western European systems were already experiencing the processes of
massification in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, higher education in Central Europe was
as elitist and inaccessible in 1990 as in past decades. One of the major reasons for the
phenomenal growth of private higher education following the collapse of communism
in 1989 in (some) Central European countries, and in Poland in particular, was the
heavily restricted access to public higher education under communism combined with

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the new private sector employment opportunities. Increasing salaries in the emergent
private sector, combined with increasing educational aspirations, gradually pushed
ever more young people into higher education.

The processes of (internal and external) privatization are currently in retreat, though:
we termed elsewhere the ongoing changes the “de-privatization” or “re-publicization”
of higher education (Kwiek 2015). Under declining demographics, the number of fee-
paying students in the public sector decreased dramatically by 40 percent in the period
2005-2013, as did the share of income from fee-paying students in the public sector,
from 16.6 percent in 2005 to 10.6 percent in 2013 (GUS 2014: 181-184). The number
of private institutions is only just beginning to decrease, and the number of mergers
and acquisitions in the private sector is on the rise. Specifically, private sector
enrolments have been shrinking dramatically, by almost 40 percent in the period 2007-
2013 (from 660,000 to 399,000 students, or by 39.45 percent). Ministerial projections
show that the number of institutions may shrink until 2020 by 80 percent (MoSHE
2012: 9). The decline of the private sector is fundamental, and cannot be reversed:
Poland will witness another decade of its gradual demise, especially that declining
demographics is combined with an expanding pool of tax-free places in the public
sector. The increasingly (internally and externally) privatized higher education of the
expansion period is becoming ever more public, with an increasing reliance on public
funding. “De-privatization” replaces “privatization”, against the global trends of
increased privatization and cost-sharing in higher education. Changes in enrolments in
the private sector in 2006-2013 are presented below in Figures 10 and 11.

Figure 10. Enrollments in the private sector, 2006-2013 (in thousands).

Source: GUS 2014: 64 (and previous editions).

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Figure 11. Enrollments in the private sector, 2006-2013 (2006 = 100 percent).

Source: GUS 2014: 64 (and previous editions).

Dramatically changing demographics is becoming the major parameter of higher
education policy: enrolments, expected to fall from about 1.95 million students (2005)
to about 1.2 million in 2025, introduce new policy dilemmas. We expect public policy
for higher education in times of expansion to be fundamentally different from public
policy in times of contraction, the issue having been explored elsewhere in more detail
(Kwiek 2013b). Powerful demographic shifts may thoroughly change the structure of
the system, and the re-monopolization of the system by the public sector cannot be
excluded, due to the gradual (spread over the next decade) decline of the private
sector. All public institutions and the surviving privates may be becoming isomorphic:
aggressively “client-seeking” under declining demographics.

Possible policy interventions at the macro-level could be in the private sector only
(public subsidization of teaching in the private sector), in the public sector only
(introducing universal fees in the public sector), or in both sectors (a combination of
both policy interventions). However, Poland does not seem to be politically prepared
for the introduction of universal fees in the public sector or for the introduction of
public subsidies in the private sector. Both might slow down the gradual disintegration
processes of the private sector in the coming years, should the sector be deemed
worthy of being supported by state interventions, which is not clear today.

Higher education expansion and projections for the future:
educational contraction and private higher education

The expansion of the Polish higher system slowed down after fifteen years (1990-
2005) and since then the system has been gradually contracting. Further powerful
contraction is expected, as projected by scenarios for the years 2010-2025 presented
below. The processes of contraction have far-reaching consequences for the future
differentiation of the system, public–private dynamics, and the future of private
institutions. There are three interrelated dimensions relevant to a study of Polish
private higher education:

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 The complicated inter-sectoral public–private dynamics with one of the highest

degrees of marketization in the system in Europe (an extraordinarily high share of
fee-paying students with both the highest share of enrolments and the highest
student numbers in the private sector in Europe).

 The most radical demographic changes projected for the next decade from among

European Union countries, leading to OECD projections in which the number of
students will go down from 1.82 million (2010) to 1.33 million (2020) to 1.17
million (2025).

 A changeable educational policy climate: the possibility of political decisions

introducing universal tuition fees in the public sector and direct state subsidization
of the private sector. (In the communist period of 1945-1989 and in the last two
decades there were no fees for full-time students in the public sector, and in the
last decade there was mostly indirect state subsidization of the private sector
through state-subsidized student loans).

In vertically differentiated systems such as the Polish one, questions like “admissions
to what”, leading to “credentials from where”, need to be asked. Two major types of
institutions provide two major types of credentials: those from traditional
metropolitan, elite public universities, with full-time modes of study – and those from
all other types of institutions and modes of study (a part-time mode of study in the
Polish context being much less academically demanding than a full-time mode).

In the first decade of the expansion (the 1990s), the difference between the two types
of institutions and the two types of credentials was not an issue of public concern.
Families with high socio-economic capital, usually from the former class of the
intelligentsia, who gradually turned into the new middle class of professionals, sent
their children to the first type of institutions, as they did in the whole post-war period.
The tax-based places in metropolitan elite institutions were scarce and available on
rigid meritocratic selection criteria, though the number of tax-based places was
increasing throughout the 1990s. However, elite metropolitan universities tried to
retain their high quality of teaching in the times of ever-increasing student numbers
through channelling the newcomers, mostly from the lower socio-economic classes, to
their paid part-time study offers, of considerably lower academic quality. Interestingly,
for almost two decades (until a Diploma Supplement was introduced, related to the
implementation of the requirements of the Bologna Process in European higher
education) there was no trace in master’s diplomas of whether the studies were full-
time or part-time. Both students and public institutions, for different reasons, were
interested in blurring the difference between two types of graduates coming, from an
academic standpoint, from clearly different study programmes. Students were
increasingly seeking credentials to be used in the labour market and willing to pay for
their education, and public institutions were increasingly seeking additional revenues
from part-time studies. Elite universities became as open to the newcomers as never
before (Wasielewski 2013): the share of students from lower socio-economic classes
in tax-based studies reached the 20 percent ceiling in the last decade, and in fee-based
studies it was much higher. In particular, the private sector (first emergent and then

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consolidating) was completely open to new clientele, following “open-door” policies.
Newcomers to the education sector after 1989, especially from the lower socio-
economic classes, went to new regional public universities, fee-based streams in elite
metropolitan public universities, or to the emergent fee-based private sector.

The quality of higher education provided in both public and private institutions, and
the differentiation of institutions and credentials, became a public issue only in the
second decade of expansion, in the 2000s. The most valuable places – those in elite
metropolitan public universities in full-time modes of study – were scarce and
competitive. They were socially valuable not only because they were tax-based, but
because they were academically demanding. All the other places, much less socially
valuable from an overall perspective, and conceived of as much less socially valuable
by the intelligentsia-turned-middle classes – were offered to all, in fee-based modes,
throughout these two decades. Students, especially from part-time studies in both
sectors, to a large extent could be described as “academically adrift”: “they might
graduate, but they are failing to develop the higher-order cognitive skills that it is
widely assumed college students should master” (as Arum and Roksa 2011: 121 put it
in an American context).

During the expansion period of 1990-2005, higher education was both accessible and
affordable, and the recognition of its differentiation by type of institution and by mode
of studies was low. This non-differentiation in the educational arena, paradoxically,
seemed useful to all stakeholders: students and their parents, public and private
institutions, as well as the state. The state was boasting ever-rising gross enrolment
rates and the increasing education of the workforce; public institutions were offering
part-time studies for fees and this non-core non-state income played a powerful role in
maintaining the morale of academics through increasing their university incomes. The
stratification of the system increasingly became common knowledge and governed
most student choices only in the second decade of the expansion when the labour
market was saturated with new graduates (about 2 million in 1990-2003).

From a demographic perspective, the number of 19-years olds was increasing
throughout the 1990s, and until 2002. Since then, the number has been decreasing, and
according to demographic projections, it will be decreasing until 2022. In 2020, there
will be about 360,000 of them, compared with about 612,000 back in 2005 and
534,000 back in 2010. Also, the pool of potential students (traditionally the 19-24 age
bracket in Poland) will be steadily decreasing every year until 2020, from about 3.4
million in 2010 to about 2.3 million in 2020 (a decrease of 31% within a decade).

The future of private higher education in Poland (and the public–private dynamics in
the context of a zero-sum game with a fixed pool of applicants) is linked to a
demographic much stronger than in any other European Union country. Vincent-
Lancrin in his paper on the impact of demography on higher education systems (based
on forward-looking quantitative scenarios) stressed the complexity of the relationship:

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All things being equal, demography directly affects student enrolments in
higher education because the size of younger age cohorts is a partial
determinant of the number of students. … If rates of entry to higher education,
together with survival rates, the average length of courses and other student-
related factors (age, etc.) remain unchanged, countries in which those cohorts
decrease in size will normally experience a fall in their student enrolments. Yet
the relationship between demography – or more specifically the size of the
younger age cohorts – and higher education enrolment levels is a complex one
(Vincent-Lancrin 2008: 43).

Increases in rates of access or a change in the length of studies may offset decreases in
cohort size. Studies can be made to last longer and access rates will depend on the
eligibility rate and the proportion of those eligible who in fact enrol (different
aspirations, and incentives, but also different numbers of places): “the actual
proportion of entrants also depends, among other things, on the cost of higher
education, the financial pressures confronting those otherwise eligible, [the] pecuniary
(and non-pecuniary) advantages that they hope to gain from higher education and the
length of their studies from an opportunity cost perspective”. Student enrolment levels
lag behind changes in the size of younger age cohorts, as the demographic shift takes
several years to be noticeable (Vincent-Lancrin 2008: 44).

The author presents two scenarios: the “status quo scenario” and the “trend scenario”
for OECD countries for the years 2015, 2020 and 2025. In the first scenario, entry
rates remain at the 2004 level; in the second, entry rates are extrapolated linearly on
the basis of the trends in each country between 2000 and 2004. The fall in enrolment
levels in Poland is the highest in the European Union, and comparable in the OECD
area only with Korea and Japan. In the first scenario, enrolments in 2025 are expected
to fall to 55% of 2005 levels, or dwindle by almost a million students (a fall of
947,000 students). To illustrate the gravity of the challenge; in the EU, only Spain and
Germany can expect numerical decreases of more than 200,000 students (Spain by
342,000 and Germany by 209,000, or three and five times less than in Poland). In the
second scenario, enrolments in Poland in 2025 are expected to fall to 65% of 2005
levels, or dwindle by almost eight hundred thousand students (775,000). In Spain, the
second highest after Poland, the decreases are expected to be five times smaller
(165,000 students).

In countries in which higher education is predominantly funded through private
expenditure, such as Japan and Korea, and where there is a combination of aging
populations, low birth rates and the saturation of higher education markets following
the completion of universal higher education, the relationship between demography
and higher education enrolments goes in both directions:

Ironically, the sustained low birth rate in both nations is often attributed to the
high cost of education which parents are expected to bear. In these
circumstances, financial issues in higher education require special attention not

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only to maintain universal access but also to prevent further demographic
decline (Yonezawa and Kim 2008: 213).

In this context, cost-sharing mechanisms may play different roles in expanding
systems than in contracting systems where birth rates are already the lowest in Europe,
as in Poland (see Johnstone and Marcucci 2010, and Johnstone 2006 for a
comprehensive summary of the rationale for cost-sharing). There may be a vicious
circle of expensive higher education (by comparative standards as well as for
individuals; both before and after the introduction of cost-sharing mechanisms) and
declining birth rates for fear of even higher private educational expenditures in the
future combined with an awareness of the social necessity to cover them in mass or
universal systems.

In Poland, the 2000-2004 period taken as a reference period for OECD projections was
a period of rapid growth, but the growth rate has not re-emerged in subsequent years as
the higher education market seems to be already saturated and the pool of applicants
has been decreasing for demographic reasons. The difference for Poland between the
two scenarios, from a qualitative perspective, is marginal, and if any later period (e.g.
2004-2008) was used as the reference period for projecting the trend in enrolments, it
would be even smaller. In both scenarios the Polish case is unprecedented in the
European Union, though.

In the present chapter, we consider the above OECD status quo scenario as more
probable than the trend scenario in the Polish case, and we further develop it adding a
political dimension. The reason to add politics is that the laws on higher education and
other accompanying laws have been undergoing substantial transformations in Poland
in 2008-2012, and the major political issue relating to the future of the private sector
and of the public/private dynamics is the possibility of universal tuition fees being
introduced in the public sector.

Therefore, we assume here three basic scenarios which relate demography with
public/private dynamics (see OECD 2006 for the idea of scenarios in education). From
the supply-side, three scenarios are possible:

 enrolments in full-time programmes in the public sector will remain at current

levels;

 enrolments will decrease proportionately in both sectors and both modes of study

(full-time, part-time) due to declining demographics; and

 enrolments in full-time programmes in the public sector will increase (if the

number of places increases by a mere 2%, which is legally allowed for in the next
few years, every year between 2013 and 2020, the public sector will be offering
more than one million places by the end of the decade; and these are “first-choice
places”).

In the first scenario, enrolments in full-time study programmes in the public sector will
remain stable in 2020 (about 850,000 students, as in 2010); in the second scenario,

17

based on demographic projections, they will be about 550,000 students; and in the
third scenario, they will exceed 1,000,000 students. Consequently, in the first scenario,
the private sector can expect about 250,000 students; in the second, about 450,000
students; and in the third, only 100,000 or less. These are very general approximations.
So far, detailed trend data on the distribution of first-year enrolments between the two
sectors and between tax-based and fee-based places in both sectors support the third
scenario. Especially that the Polish Constitutional Court has decided (June 2014) that
charging fees in the public sector for full-time studies in the case of a second field of
study is unconstitutional. The first attempt to introduce fees for no more than 10
percent of students (in 2012), a testing ground before introducing universal fees for all
students and an important part of ongoing funding reforms, has failed. The chances to
introduce fees in the coming years are even lower: the budget pressures are lower as
the system has been contracting.

The policy conclusions are surprising: in fact, the biggest private higher education
system in Europe (“independent private” in OECD terms, fee-based in practical terms)
is heavily dependent for its survival on a change in higher education financing –
namely, the introduction of universal fees in its competing public sector. It is possible
that it is only the (rather improbable) introduction of universal fees in the public sector
that could stop the gradual demise of the greater part of the private sector, with
studying in the fee-based private sector currently being clearly a “second choice” for
secondary school graduates. Public subsidization of full-time students in the private
sector can be viewed as a half-measure only: in 2012, there were only 83,700 full-time
students in the private sector (or a mere 18.2 percent). Even if all full-time students are
publicly supported, the remaining 82 percent of private sector students will not be.

If universal fees will not be introduced in this decade, which is very probable, the
private sector will be heavily reduced in size. Maintaining the tax-based public sector
under declining demographics is a disaster for the private sector, unless there are
mergers between both private institutions and between public and private institutions,
envisaged in the new law of March 2011. Consequently, lobbying for the introduction
of universal fees in the public sector is the most effective survival strategy for the
private sector in the years to come. Individual private institutions’ strategies count
much less than macro-level changes in funding mechanisms for public institutions.

Possible policy interventions can be the public subsidization of teaching in the private
sector, introducing universal fees in the public sector or a combination of both policy
interventions. The segment of higher education with a strong interest in new policy
choices is the private sector, expected to be desperately seeking survival strategies at
the macro-level of national policies. What seems theoretically possible may be
politically complicated; lobbying for the two policy choices is in progress. Given the
stability of demographic factors, the unstable, unpredictable political factors are
therefore extremely important for the higher education system as a whole and for the
future of Polish private higher education.

18

The Polish private sector is already declining and the public–private dynamics is
already changing, and expected to change much more fundamentally in the coming
years, as seen in Figures 12 and 13 below.

Figure 12. Changes in enrolments, 1990-2022 (2014-2022 projections by the Ministry of
Science and Higher Education).

0,00

500000,00

1000000,00

1500000,00

2000000,00

2500000,00

1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 2020 2022

Figure 13. Changes in the share of enrolments, by sector (pHE – public higher education,
PHE – private higher education), in percent (2014-2022 projections by the Ministry of
Science and Higher Education).

0,00%

10,00%

20,00%

30,00%

40,00%

50,00%

60,00%

70,00%

80,00%

90,00%

100,00%

1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 2017 2019 2021

pHE

PHE

19

Surprisingly, and against two powerful global trends of private sector growth (Levy
2009) and cost-sharing in public sector funding (Johnstone 2010, Johnstone and
Marcucci 2012, Callender and Heller 2013) in post-massified or universal systems, the
Polish dual public–private system is increasingly based on public institutions and their
tax-based students. In financial terms, the inflow of fees to the system as a whole, and
to both the public and the private sector separately, has also been falling since 2007,
and is expected to fall further in the next decade.

The changing share in enrolments over time in the two sectors is U-shaped for the
public sector and inverted U-shaped for the private sector, as shown in Fig. 2 above.
The processes of the de-privatization of the system, after almost two decades of ever-
growing privatization, also denote the parallel processes of the re-monopolization of
the system by the public sector (which would be a return to a standard Western
European pattern in which the role of the private sector is marginal, Western Europe
being “one of the last hold-outs of free higher education” from a global perspective,
Marcucci 2013).

In the next decade, the system may be systematically returning to the status quo in
which public institutions are in a near-monopolistic position (which means more
public–private inter-sectoral homogenization) but they will be forced to differ more in
their educational offers than ever before (which means more public–public and
private–private intra-sectoral differentiation). The gradual decline of the private sector
is thus inevitably leading to the hegemony of the public sector. In all probability, it is a
case of tertium non datur (although the history of higher education research tends to
show that the field should strongly avoid large-scale and long-term predictions).

The decline of private higher education is a rare theme in scholarly literature, as it is a
rare phenomenon from a global perspective (Romania being another example, see
Curaj, Deca and Egron-Polak 2015). But it is also rare for universal higher education
systems (in Martin Trow’s terms: gross enrolment rates exceeding 50 percent, see
Trow 2007) to be contracting, as is the case in Poland. As Levy stresses,

Many types of private higher education do decline and for various reasons. Yet,
private higher education grows significantly despite all the negative factors
identified. The overall private higher education decrease almost always refers to
public- and private-sectors shares, not absolute enrollments. Even proportional
decline in the private sector applies only to a minority of countries. The most
vulnerable private higher education is the demand-absorbing type, which
underscores that all parts of the sector do not face constant vulnerability (Levy
2010: 11-12).

Poland (together with several other post-communist European countries) is exceptional
from a global perspective: both private shares in enrolments and also absolute
enrolments in the private sector have been decreasing over the last five years. The
private higher education sector may expect to enrol still fewer students every year and
for a system in which there are still 306 (2013) private institutions it is an enormous

20

institutional funding challenge. The demographic shift in Poland creates a major
institutional funding challenge to all public institutions and introduces fierce
competition among them; but for private institutions, it may be a life or death
challenge. As a recent study by the national Institute for Educational Research (IBE
2011: 110) points out, “it has to be assumed that a part of [the] newly created private
institutions, of relatively poor educational offer, opened to meet the demand from the
generation from the 1980s … will not be able to survive” (IBE 2011: 110). A single
survival strategy suggested by the Institute is the change of offer from higher
education to adult education. Similarly, Ireneusz Białecki and Małgorzata Dąbrowa-
Szefler (2009: 194) stress that demographic trends represent “a clear danger, above all
for the financially weaker and poorer-quality fee-financed private HEIs”. These
findings are consistent with Levy’s global conclusions about private higher education
(2011: 5): “Much PHE has not had to offer very much, other than access and the
prospect or hope of a degree. Logically, then, it is the demand-absorbing subsector of
PHE that is most vulnerable when demands slows”. But, at the same time, the trend
will affect each institution separately, and, consistent with what Arthur Levine et al.
wrote about the demographic challenges of the 1990s in American higher education, it
is important to recognize that each college and university can determine its own future:
“Every college in America is facing [a] somewhat different set of demographic
circumstances. Each has the ability to do nothing, to hope for serendipity, or to shape
tomorrow. The choice is entirely theirs” (Levine et al. 1989: 180).

In Poland, the current and projected decline is fundamental rather than limited in
duration. It is unclear to what extent Poland is politically prepared for the introduction
of universal fees in the public sector or for the introduction of subsidies in the private
sector. It is also unclear to what extent the survival problem of the private sector will
become a major policy problem to be solved by politicians. The introduction of
universal fees may also be politically difficult in a much-felt climate of economic
crisis in Europe.

Expansion in Poland in both the public and private sectors was classically demand-
driven: students and their families demanded more access to higher education
following the collapse of communism, and their demand was being increasingly met.
Higher education was no longer strictly rationed by the state, and the processes of
massification were fuelled by both sectors and both modes of study. Both sectors, at
the same time, were strongly “client-seeking” in the times of expansion; but the
question is to what extent “client-seeking” behaviours may be even more pronounced
in the times of contraction, with far-reaching consequences for admissions criteria and
selectivity.

Clearly, the imperatives of client-seeking and status-seeking behaviors conflict
with one another. Client-seeking implies low admissions criteria while status-
seeking implies fewer clients than could otherwise be admitted. The conflict is
often resolved through the differentiation of a status-seeking first tier of
institutions and a client-seeking second tier, which is less selective and enjoys
lower prestige. Thus, we expect to find greater enrolment rates and more

21

institutional differentiation in market systems than in state-funded systems
(Arum et al. 2007: 8).

The Polish system is more market-like than most state-funded European systems but
also much more state-funded than most global market-funded systems, such as the
United States, Korea or Japan. The increasing stratification of higher education
institutions along client-seeking and prestige-seeking lines is a discernible process in
times of system expansion. Most private institutions were more client-seeking than
most public institutions; and both public, in their part-time studies, and private
institutions were clearly focused on income-generation from fees. What will happen to
these processes in times of the system contraction? All institutions, public (elite and
regional) and private (both semi-elite and demand-absorbing), might potentially be
forced to become increasingly client-seeking (with perhaps no significant difference
whether the clients will be tax-based students funded by the state or self-funded fee-
based students, no matter whether universal fees in the public sector are finally
introduced in the coming decade or not). The introduction of universal tuition fees in
the public sector, not attempted so far except for a test regarding a second field of
studies, may fundamentally change the inter-sectoral dynamics in the system, e.g.
allow a higher proportion of private institutions to survive than otherwise would in a
landscape with a tax-based public sector, but in the context of demographic decline
this does not have to contribute to the maintenance of the differentiation between
client-seeking and status-seeking institutions. Both sectors may find it necessary to
become as aggressively client-seeking as the private sector was throughout two recent
decades.

It can be assumed that in contracting systems, the selectivity of all institutions,
including elite and regional, semi-elite and demand-absorbing, in both the public and
private sectors, can be expected to decrease over time. Admissions criteria can be
expected to be less stringent, and access for candidates from lower socio-economic
classes to institutions which are highly selective today may be increasingly less based
on meritocratic criteria. The metropolitan elite public universities may be expected to
become more accessible to all social strata if their current capacities (human resources
and infrastructure) are to be maintained. To maintain their current levels of selectivity,
they would have to decrease their capacities as contraction processes progress in the
next 15 years. From a political economy perspective, large-scale cuts in jobs in public
higher education leading to a contraction in the public segment of the system are
conceivable, but probably not in the coming decade. There seems to be no political
will to decrease the pool of academics in this sector (see a synopsis of two decades of
changes in Polish higher education in Kwiek 2014, and a European context in Kwiek
2003, Kwiek 2009a, and Kwiek 2009b).

Standard supply-side solutions for private providers in a contraction era could
potentially be the provision of high-quality, socially-recognized and labour-market
rewarded education. But the policy of non-interference and loose governmental control
in the 1990s contributed to low competitiveness and low social recognition of the
private sector vis-à-vis the public sector. A handful of exceptions (10-20 private

22

institutions mostly located in Warsaw, the capital city, which could be called,
following Levy 2009, “semi-elite”) does not make a dramatic difference but needs to
be noted.

Since demographic trends cannot be altered within a decade, the private sector is
seeking to redefine national higher education funding architectures. In the good times
of ever-increasing student numbers, the independence of the private sector from the
state was key. Today, targeted state interference (the introduction of universal fees in
the public sector or of state subsidies for teaching in the private sector, based, for
instance, on competitive bids announced for various fields of study, periodically
announced by the Ministry) seems the only long-term policy solution for the majority
of privates. Still, the question is whether the subsidization of full-time students in the
private sector, as a policy option, would dramatically change the future of private
providers. The higher education market is increasingly a “prestige market” or a
“positional market” and credentials, as well as the jobs and incomes these credentials
lead to, are “positional goods” (see Brown et al. 2011: 136, Hirsch 1976: 59-52, Frank
1985: 7-8, and especially Marginson 1997: 38-46). As elsewhere in Europe, prestige
comes from traditional elite public universities.

Recent policy proposals (2011-2013) seem to indicate a possible change in policy
patterns in financing higher education. Following Levy’s typology of public/private
mixes in higher education systems (Levy 1986a), they might indicate a policy move
towards the homogenization of the two sectors. However, the road to what is termed in
official documents of the Polish rectors’ conference “the convergence of the two
sectors” (see Woźnicki 2013) is a long and uncertain one. The idea of public funding
for both sectors, and universal fees in both sectors for all students, has been fervently
discussed in the last five years, and this convergence does not seem to be any closer.

Private-public blends involve a number of important questions: a single sector or a
dual one; if a single sector, statist or public-autonomous; if dual sectors, homogenized
or distinctive; and if distinctive, minority private or majority private? (Levy 1986a:
198). The policy move suggested by the idea of the “convergence of the two sectors”
in this typology, would be from the fourth pattern (dual, distinctive higher education
sectors: smaller private sector funded privately, larger public sector funded publicly)
or the third pattern (dual, homogenized higher education sectors: minority private
sector, similar funding for each sector. Levy’s first and second patterns refer to single
systems, with no private sectors).

The policy debates about private-public financing emerging in Poland today are not
historically or geographically unique. Levy identified three major policy debates in his
fourth pattern of financing: the first concerns the very growth of private institutions;
the second concerns whether new private sectors should receive public funds; and the
third policy debate concerns tuition in the public sector. While in the 1990s, the debate
about growth dominated in Poland, the 2010s can be expected to be dominated by
debates about fees and public subsidies. In a highly centralized system, with a long

23

tradition of strong government influence on public policy in higher education, the
answers to the both the fees and subsidies debates are strictly political.

The fall in enrolment levels in Poland is projected to be one of the highest in Europe,
and comparable only with other post-communist countries: Bulgaria, Romania,
Slovakia, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. According to several consistent enrolment
scenarios based on national statistical data (such as e.g. Vincent-Lancrin 2008: 45,
Antonowicz and Godlewski 2011: 10-14, IBE 2011: 110-11, Ernst and Young 2010:
20) enrolments in Poland in 2025 are expected to fall to 55-65% of 2005 levels. In
Western Europe, only Spain and Germany can expect numerical decreases of more
than 200,000 students by 2025 (Vincent-Lancrin 2008: 49-51). Certainly, as Easterlin
(1989: 138) confirmed in the US context, there is an “inverse association between
college enrollment rates and the size of the college-age population” (and what Frances
terms “the cohort effect”, Frances 1989: 143); “enrollment rates, in fact, partly depend
on the size of the college-age population – other things remaining constant, at the
aggregate level a larger college-age population makes for lower enrollment rates,
while a smaller college-age population makes for higher rates” (Easterlin 1989: 137).
Demographic factors need to be combined with social, economic, and public-policy
related factors in any meaningful projections for the future.

Conclusions

The Polish case study is important for several reasons: the public–private dynamics is
rapidly changing in a system which has the highest enrolments in the private sector in
the European Union today. In the global context of expanding higher education
systems there are several systems in Central and Eastern Europe, and Poland is the
biggest of them, which are actually contracting. Their contraction is fundamental and
rooted in declining demographics. In the global (rather than European) context of
increasing reliance on cost-sharing mechanisms and on the private sector growth
paradigm in university funding, the Polish system seems to be moving in the opposite
direction: global trends towards privatization can be juxtaposed with the Polish
counter-trend towards de-privatization. The number of private institutions is
decreasing and is expected to decrease much further; the share of private sector
enrolments is decreasing and is also expected to decrease much further, as is the
number of private sector students. Furthermore, the number of tax-based places in the
public sector is on the rise, and income from fees (charged to part-timers only) has
been steadily declining. To put it in a nutshell: there are ever more public sector
students compared with private sector students, and ever more public revenues
compared with private revenues. The number of private providers is shrinking and the
number of fee-paying students in the system as a whole is shrinking too. Poland is the
most vivid example in Europe regarding the combined impact of demographic and
political factors on public–private dynamics in higher education.
After a quarter of a century, declining demographics is transforming the growth of the
private sector into a gradual decline, and the general trend of privatization in the
expansion period into a general trend of de-privatization in a contraction period.
However, as we higher education researchers know, any definite conclusions and

24

large-scale predictions should be avoided as the number of “known unknowns” and
“unknown unknowns” in higher education is unlimited.

Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the National Research Council (NCN)
through its MAESTRO grant DEC-2011/02/A/HS6/00183 (2012-2017).

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Data Appendix

Table 1. Enrolments by field of study in Poland, private sector, 2000-2013.

Academic

year

Education

Humanities

and arts

Social

sciences,

economy

and law

Science

Technology,

industry,

construction

Agriculture

Health

and

welfare

Services

2000

54042 12610 320487

19992 7166

1613 267

12776

2001

57126 22324 321474

25593 3771

1543 488

19077

2002

62588 23750 315751

28867 4172

1395 949

23969

2003

65590 24768 299009

33195 4957

1394 1897

26355

2004

68949 24846 297273

36239 3005

1510 4937

30250

2005

71278 32019 306659

33992 5400

1817 8980

35946

2006

94803 42984 367797

51082 11483 2519 20322

49323

2007

98566 47271 370175

47668 13977 2685 26868

53257

2008

102175 42231 367577

41969 16125

2603 29984

56732

2009

107341 36315 344252

34858 17598

2343 34625

55765

2010

97025 34164 305600

28781 19541 1896 37213

55856

2011

84212 33342 265780

24767 19640 1572 32869

56014

2012

69973 30827 229545

21969 19090 1348 33160

53538

2013

53761 29460 195473

20122 17189 1345 30683

50529

Source: GUS 2014: 64-65 (and previous editions).

27

Table 2. Share of enrolments by field of study in Poland, private sector, 2000-2013 (in %).

Academic

year

Education

Humanities

and arts

Social

sciences,

economy

and law

Science

Technology,

industry,

construction

Agriculture

Health

and

welfare

Services

Total

2000

12 .60%

2 .94%

74 .71%

4 .66%

1 .67%

0 .38%

0 .06%

2 .98%

100 .00%

2001

12 .66%

4 .95%

71 .22%

5 .67%

0 .84%

0 .34%

0 .11%

4 .23%

100 .00%

2002

13 .56%

5 .15%

68 .43%

6 .26%

0 .90%

0 .30%

0 .21%

5 .19%

100 .00%

2003

14 .35%

5 .42%

65 .41%

7 .26%

1 .08%

0 .30%

0 .41%

5 .76%

100 .00%

2004

14 .76%

5 .32%

63 .65%

7 .76%

0 .64%

0 .32%

1 .06%

6 .48%

100 .00%

2005

14 .37%

6 .45%

61 .82%

6 .85%

1 .09%

0 .37%

1 .81%

7 .25%

100 .00%

2006

14 .81%

6 .71%

57 .44%

7 .98%

1 .79%

0 .39%

3 .17%

7 .70%

100 .00%

2007

14 .92%

7 .16%

56 .05%

7 .22%

2 .12%

0 .41%

4 .07%

8 .06%

100 .00%

2008

15 .50%

6 .40%

55 .74%

6 .36%

2 .45%

0 .39%

4 .55%

8 .60%

100 .00%

2009

16 .95%

5 .74%

54 .38%

5 .51%

2 .78%

0 .37%

5 .47%

8 .81%

100 .00%

2010

16 .73%

5 .89%

52 .68%

4 .96%

3 .37%

0 .33%

6 .42%

9 .63%

100 .00%

2011

16 .25%

6 .43%

51 .29%

4 .78%

3 .79%

0 .30%

6 .34%

10 .81%

100 .00%

2012

15 .23%

6 .71%

49 .96%

4 .78%

4 .15%

0 .29%

7 .22%

11 .65%

100 .00%

2013

13 .49%

7 .39%

49 .04%

5 .05%

4 .31%

0 .34%

7 .70%

12 .68%

100 .00%

Source: GUS 2014: 64-65 (and previous editions).